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SNIPPET: "A gunman threatened to detonate a car bomb and claimed links to al-Qaida while robbing an American Express office on the Magnificent Mile this afternoon, police said. About 4:20 p.m., a man approached a female employee in the American Express travel service office at 605 N. Michigan Ave. at first trying to buy euros and showing her a gun in his waistband as he demanded money, said Near North District Captain Leo Crotty." SNIPPET: "The man, described as 6 feet tall, 200 pounds and possibly of Middle Eastern descent, went on to instruct all the office employees they had...

NEW YORK, May 20 (Reuters) - American Express Co (AXP.N) Chief Executive Kenneth Chenault said a new law that would impose sweeping limits on credit card issuers will likely hurt his company and reduce the flow of credit to consumers. Chenault said the legislation will be "more negative than positive" for American Express, because it will make it more difficult for the credit card and travel services company to set rates based on the risk its customers pose. Chenault said: "My concern is from the standpoint of credit being available, to particularly consumers who need it."

If you have an American Express card, beware: your card could be put on hold at any moment, even if you think you've made all your payments on time. That means, you won't be able to charge anything on your Amex card. That's exactly what happened to Cathy Jones, a businesswoman with three Amex charge cards. She got a call from Amex last week saying her cards were now on hold, while the company did a financial investigation to make sure she could pay her bills. Jones was baffled. She's been an Amex cardholder since 1989 and can't remember being...

It used to be that credit-card companies lured customers with cash rewards. Now American Express Co. is paying to get rid of them. The card issuer is offering selected customers a $300 AmEx prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts. The unusual move underscores how quickly conditions have deteriorated in the credit-card market. The current economic morass was provoked by spiking mortgage defaults. But as the economic crisis widens and unemployment climbs, there is growing concern that credit-card defaults will soar into the stratosphere as well. "This is a huge paradigm shift," says Curtis...

You probably know that credit card companies have been scrutinizing every charge on your account in recent years, searching for purchases that thieves may have made. Turns out, though, that some of the companies have been suspicious of you, too. In recent months, American Express has gone far beyond simply checking your credit score and making sure you pay on time. The company has been looking at home prices in your area, the type of mortgage lender you're using and whether small-business card customers work in an industry under siege. It has also been looking at how you spend your...

American Express Co. which is being hit by slowing consumer spending and rising defaults, is seeking roughly $3.5 billion in taxpayer-funded capital from the federal government, according to people familiar with the situation. The card issuer is the latest company not directly hit by the housing crisis to request cash from the federal government. While retailers, car companies and others hit by the slowdown in consumer spending haven't gotten the government money, financial firms of all kinds are getting federal bailouts. It isn't clear if the application under ...

I received an email yesterday detailing questionable charges on my American Express card. So, I called the phone number for their "security" department to verify. I was quite astounded when I was connected to a customer service person in INDIA. Not only could I barely understand this person, but he obviously had access to my private financial data, including my Social Security number. So, I immediately called AmEx's customer service people here in America and cancelled my account. Surprisingly, they didn't seem to care, and their only response was "most companies do it." I'm completely disgusted by the behavior of...

SEATAC, Wash. - As the sun dipped low in the sky last Sunday and his plane began its descent, Eugene Nelson had a sinking feeling that something was wrong. He'd been in the air for hours, much longer than his business flight from Hong Kong to Taiwan should have taken. Then the airliner flashed a map of his flight's path on a video screen, and it hit him. Instead of descending toward the island off China's eastern coast, the next stop on the Intel Corp. engineer's itinerary would be the remote city of Taiyuan, an industrial center deep within China....

Excerpt - American Express, Converse, Gap and Giorgio Armani are joining with Bono, the rock star, to sell products under a new brand, called “Red”, which will dedicate some of its revenues to fight Aids in Africa. The effort will include the creation of an AmexCo Red credit card that will be marketed first in the UK, targeting an estimated 1.5m British “conscience consumers” who are seen as more likely to buy products associated with a social benefit. AmexCo believes this figure will rise to 4m within three years. Other Red products available this spring will include Converse sports shoes...

With Citigroup (C:NYSE) selling its life insurance business and American Express (AXP:NYSE) spinning off its financial advisory business, the talk on Wall Street is about the death of the much-hyped financial supermarket. The other side of that debate is of a more speculative variety. It involves Sandy Weill's past, Wall Street's present fixation with mergers and acquisitions, and the future of Citigroup -- as an acquirer. Indeed, some believe interest in a Citigroup-American Express marriage is one reason shares of the charge-card company surged $3.46, or 6.5%, to $56.81 Tuesday. They wonder, was the decision to ditch a financial planning...

Robert De Niro and American Express are being criticized for a new 30-second TV ad airing in the U.S. and the U.K. which includes shots of the now barren site of the World Trade Center. In the ad, directed by Martin Scorsese, De Niro walks through New York, referring to "My East .. my West Side." When he arrives at Ground Zero, he remarks, "My heartbreak." (The spot's tagline is: "My life. My card.") Brand Republic, an online publication covering advertising and marketing, said that the spot is drawing flak for exploiting the 9/11 tragedy.

Sorry for the vanity... This isn't in the news, but it should be. This year my wife bought American Express gift cards for family members. She didn't give me one, because last year I made such a stink about getting them from my kids. I told everyone that if they weren’t from Home Depot, then don't bother. To make a long story short, I knew she bought them but since they were from American Express, I thought they would be OK. Boy was I wrong. The first indication of problems was when my daughter-in-law tried to use hers and it...

A woman who posed as a Saudi princess is suing American Express for letting her rack up an enormous credit card bill. Antoinette Millard is suing the credit card company for letting her use a special "Centurion Black" card meant for people who charge more than $150,000 a year. She says she was mentally ill at the time of her spending spree and that American Express should have known that she was acting irrationally and impulsively. She is suing them for $2 million. Millard is currently awaiting trial on grand larceny charges. Millard had also been under scrutiny for posing...

Pretend princess An toinette Millard is showing some real gall: She's suing American Express for $2 million for allowing her to go on a nearly $1 million shopping spree she couldn't afford at some of the city's priciest stores. Millard's filing says she "was suffering from anorexia, depression, panic attacks, [and] head tumors," and the credit-card giant "knew or should have known that [she] was acting impulsively and irrationally." That argument hasn't moved American Express, which got a court order this week to freeze her assets.

NEW YORK - American Express Co., the travel and financial services giant, said Monday it was suing Visa and MasterCard over anticompetitive business practices. he way for the lawsuit was cleared by the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) on Oct. 4, when it issued a final ruling in an antitrust case brought by the Justice Department (news - web sites), which accused the two biggest card associations in America, Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc., of restraining competition. The high court's decision let stand a lower court ruling requiring Visa and MasterCard to allow their member banks...

Big companies are hoping to marry their brands to gays and lesbians this weekend — about 20,000 of them. In the first days after the presidential election — in which gay marriage proved to be a pivotal issue — the nation's biggest exposition on homosexual life is setting attendance records. Booths for exhibitors are also sold out for the first time at the Javits Center, which since 1999 has hosted Gay Life Expo, one of the center's liveliest trade shows. Companies ranging from Citigroup and American Express to Jet Blue and J.P. Morgan Chase are hawking their offerings to the...

Financial ServicesAmerican Express Backs Up Its Bark , 01.29.04, 4:47 PM ET NEW YORK - American Express and MBNA delivered a seismic shock to the credit card system today. Wilmington, Del.-based MBNA (nyse: KRB - news - people ), the second-largest U.S. issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards after Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), will now add American Express (nyse: AXP - news - people ) cards to the mix. MBNA will be the first U.S.-based bank to issue cards on the American Express network. Over the course of 2003, AmEx executives said that the company...

American Express is turning to Gangs of New York helmer Martin Scorsese to produce and narrate a documentary about the Statue of Liberty as part of a nationwide campaign to re-open the national monument, which has been closed down to tourists since the September 11th attacks. Although the monument itself is off limits, the grounds of Liberty Island have been open to the public. Scorsese made the announcemnt on Tuesday, along with New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg and American Express chairman and CEO Kenneth Chenault, in the city's Battery Park. The special is slated to air on January 15th on...

The head of a Washington, DC based media watchdog group is asking that advertisers demand to preview a planned CBS mini series on former President Ronald Reagan before sponsoring the program. Media Reasearch Center President L. Brent Bozell Tuesday sent a letter to each of the nations top 100 advertisers urging them to preview the movie before making a sponsorship decision because it is what Bozell called 'a partisan attack against one of Americas most beloved Presidents.'A review of the script by New York Times writer Jim Reutenberg noted the two part mini series, scheduled for later this month, makes...

This weekend,looking at our checking account balance on line noticed it appeared a bit short.Checking the transactions,our American Express payment-taken out electronically for quite some time although we send in a check-was withdrawn twice on June 3,2002. Called the bank,they said the quickest way to get credit was to cal AE and have them credit the AE account. Called AE,and heres the reason for this alert-the rep said would I hang on while she checked a directive she recalled reading as this "has happened to a lot of people". She said AE was working not to credit our AE account...

<p>NEW YORK -- We'll return to our regularly scheduled program right after this brief message. And before we get to that brief message -- well, here's a briefer one.</p> <p>Pop!</p> <p>As an "NYPD Blue" rerun unspools on Court TV, the screen shrinks and shifts. Up from the bottom rises a message: This episode of the famed cop show is brought to you by Planters' nuts, the salty Kraft Foods Inc. snack. As a movie plays on AOL Time Warner Inc. cable-counterpart TNT, a quiz runs across the bottom of the screen, asking viewers a question about the film. It's sponsored by United Parcel Service Inc. Earlier this year, TNT tested a tactic that had a message from an American Express Co. financial-services operation appear -- just as Steve Martin faced a particularly thorny money decision during "Father of the Bride II."</p>